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Interesting article about Alfonse D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, and his recent hiring as a lobbyist for the Poker Players Alliance. Apparently the PPA is hopeful D'Amato can raise enough support in Washington to overturn the recent ban on online gambling. That bill was only passed because in the dead of night senator Frist tacked it on to the Port Securities Act, and just before the recess for mid-term elections. Of course no senator , whether running for reelection or not, would make standing up to Big Brother a higher priority than the safety of our nation's harbors. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of this, but I'm going to bet...nothing. Fold.

D'Amato Holding Aces?

Kanye West says President Bush doesn't care about black people.

Well, apparently Kanye West loves Indian food.

What do the two statements have to do with each other? Not much, I just thought perhaps instead of spending $3,900 on getting his Indian food delivered (granted, it is for a party of eight people so that's only about $500 per person), he might, you know, spend that money on people who could use a helping hand, like the African-Americans he was referring to when calling Bush out for Katrina relief.

Here's another one of my favorite Kanye West quotes (from Wikipedia):

In January 2006, West again sparked controversy when he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in the image of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. Later that month, he suggested in Playboy that if a bible were written in the present day, he is famous and important enough to be included in it. "I throw up historical subjects in a way that makes kids want to learn about them." West claimed, "[I'm] definitely in the history books already."

This dude is talented -- he can throw up historical subjects. I'd like to see him vomit up Benjamin Franklin. I'd pay $3,900 to see that!

Kanye West Getting His Tandoori On.

Apparently the Geico Cavemen are going to be starring in their own TV series. Does anyone else think perhaps (no, definitely) this is a horrible idea? I mean I love the Cavemen more than anyone I know (just ask my girlfriend) but I don't know if it work for a half hour. Maybe if it were a show on HBO, and they could curse, shoot each other, and throw in a bit of nudity it might be a hit. But then again, who wants to see naked cavemen? Ugh.

Geico Cavemen

p.s. Extra points for the reference to Bob, the talking baby. I think I speak for everyone when I say WTF?!?

(unless the server crashes)

Here's some pretty cool news. MIT has unveiled plans to make their entire curriculum online by the end of the year. Over 1800 courses (so far they're a bit over 1500).

Per the article from the CSM via CBS, "The MIT site, along with companion sites that translate the material into other languages, now average about 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet," Ms. Margulies says. Those include Iraq, Darfur, "even Antarctica," she says. "We hear from [the online students] all the time with inspirational stories about how they are using these materials to change their lives. They're really, really motivated."

MIT Education Online.

News Article.

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This is really an incredible sight to see...a time lapse portrait of Thom Yorke done in Photoshop. Supposedly it only took 4 hours to do; it hardly seems possible. I think I could study twelve hours a day and never come with anything that brilliant.

A link to the video on YouTube can be found here: Thom Yorke

And for those who haven't heard it yet, Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser is definitely worth listening to as well.

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The Pirate Loot Problem:

A neat brain teaser from Wikipedia:

Imagine you are the oldest in a band of five pirates, where no two pirates in the group are of the same age. It is your responsibility as the oldest pirate to decide how to divide the group's booty, which as per the pirate's game comprises one-hundred pieces of gold. Once you announce how you will allocate the gold, all the pirates in the group (including you) vote either "yes" or "no" on your decision. If at least half of the votes are "yes", the pirates divide the loot as you directed, after which everyone carries on about his business. But, if more than half of the votes are "no", you are then killed, and the task of deciding the allocation of gold lies with the next oldest pirate in the group.

Knowing that all the other pirates are just as smart, and just as logical as you, and furthermore, knowing that they all want the largest amount of gold they can get for themselves, how do you divide the gold so that you get the maximum amount of gold pieces possible, and guarantee that you will receive enough "yes" votes to stay alive?

Click here for the solution.

None of the pirates I know are that bright though.

As I recently discovered, getting Drupal to work with GoDaddy is no easy task. As a newcomer to both services and a self-admitted novice at any programming language, it was a bit tough. Now though, in hindsight, it is a relatively simple process to get Drupal and GoDaddy to work together. Most of my confusion arose from outdated instructions that were relevant only to former versions of Drupal. It really is so much easier with Drupal 5.1

So, without further delay, here's a quick and dirty guide to getting started with a GoDaddy linux server account. One last note, this should work for either one or multiple websites hosted on the same account.

1. Go to the Drupal website at http://drupal.org and download Drupal 5.1

2. Extract the compressed file into a folder named Drupal.

3. Use an FTP client --I use fireFTP for Firefox-- (or the provided service from GoDaddy if you must) to upload the entire Drupal folder to your root directory.

4. In GoDaddy, select "My Hosting Account", open the control panel, then select Domain Management, and have your website point to /drupal by using the domain hosting window. It will take a couple of minutes for this to be set up.

5. While that is being set up, click on databases, then MySql, and create new database. Choose MySql 5.0, then a name and password. After you do that, it'll take a few more moments for the database to be set up.

6. Now, using your FTP client, navigate and create a new folder under drupal/sites with the name of your site, but no www. For example, if your website name is located at http://www.domain.com, you would make a folder in the sites folder named domain.com

7. Now, copy the version of settings.php from drupal/sites/default to the folder you just created in step #6.

8. The next step is to find out the location of the SQL database you created in step #5. Do this by clicking on the name of the database in the GoDaddy control panel -- and a bunch of information will pop up. What you're looking for should look something like p11mysql33.secureserver.net. Copy it to your clipboard.

9. Navigate to your website (in our example case http://www.domain.com) and you should see the Drupal welcome page. First, enter your database name, user name, and password as you created in step #5. Then click on the tab marked advanced options (don't worry, it's not that tricky) and paste the database host (it looks like p11mysql33.secureserver.net) into that section.

Click save configuration and that's it! There will likely be a couple of error messages at the top of the screen (including a create temporary table error -- more on that later), but beneath you should see a message telling you the installation was successful. Go ahead and create the administrator account

Congratulations! That's all there is to it.

Keep in mind you can use this for multiple websites from the same hosting account: just make your website point to the drupal folder like step 4, add a new SQL database as in step 5, and a new folder in the drupal/sites folder like you did in step 6.

Also note, unlike old versions of drupal, you don't need to make any changes to the settings.php file (this is where I got stuck -- making changes to this file). The generic settings.php file is all you need in your site folder. It really is that easy!

If you have any questions or difficulty getting Drupal up and running with GoDaddy, feel free to leave a comment and I'll do my best to help you out.

How messed up is health care in America? Pretty damned messed up, I'd say. Check out this story about an inner city kid who died from a toothache that developed into a brain abscess. Now, universal healthcare, socialized medicine and all that is a sticky situation. There's no guarantee that this child would have been saved in another country with universal coverage where it can take months to get an appointment. But presumably, somewhere along the line, some DDS, MD, DO etc...someone would have realized that this kid was in trouble. By the time they did, it was too late.

More irony: this ended up costing about $250,000 all of which could have been better spent on preventative medicine. And as an added bonus, the kid would still be alive. I do believe investing in preventative medicine is a sound investment and would actually help us get out of the current morass our health care system finds itself in.

Read the article about the toothache here.

O Mullets, how we all love them...here's a great link from a friend of mine and courtesy of Mullet Junction.

Brilliant stuff, and it get even more funny as you read down.

My favorites were Mullfdiver and Humpty Femull Dumpty.

See the page here

The lastest in the ongoing saga of Ann Coulter, Her Foot and Mouth: A Love Story

Apparently the First Lady of Conservatives believes John Edwards is gay. Instead of saying something like he plays for the other team, he's a
sneaky butcher, bone smuggler, back tourist, etc. she uses a different BAD word that didn't really make anyone laugh. What a freak she is. Anyway, you can find the the CNN article about it here.

And a link to the original video here.

I don't know, I think the whole thing is pretty funny. I mean, I can see how some people are pissed off, but who takes this woman seriously? Apparently in a follow-up she said something to the effect that she didn't mean to insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards. And now, Edwards, in a what I think is somewhat slimy move, is using this incident to collect $100,000 in "Coulter Cash" to "fight back against the politics of bigotry". Apparently at some point, perhaps while I was sleeping, Edwards became a great champion for the oppressed in this country. But he needs more money to do it, because he's struggling to make ends meet. Go John, keep fighting the man.

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